A Rural Blog that provides views & insights from a Conservative Georgia Democrat

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Pro-Life Democrats On The Outside Looking In...

They are battered, chipped, stained and cracked in a few places. But extinct? Nope. They are pro-life Democrats, and they are a living ghost of times past.There are a few...VERY FEW pro-life Democrats rattling around the legislature these days, but they are plentiful on the local level they are so compromised that they have no significance. But they keeps hanging on in the despised fringes of the larger Democratic party, doing their best to be the voice of life in the party of abortion.

But the person who eventually decides to run as a pro-life democrat this has to be tougher than the pro-life Democrats we’ve had before. It is not possible to be a pro-life Democrat and be well-liked or supported by your party. The pressures other Democrats put on pro life Democrats to compromise their beliefs are enough to squeeze a lump of coal into a diamond. Unfortunately what happens in practice is that they far too often manage to squeeze the diamond of a pro life Democrat into a lump of compromising coal.

Look at State Representative Rick Crawford, Polk County Conservative Democrat who stated if re-elected he will switch to the GOP, because of the democrats new stance in support of same sex marriage. Remember he is also pro-life so these may have been part of the reason he came to such a conclusion, (as well as trying to have his own hide from defeat in a conservative district)

You can be a pro life Democrat and do it right. But you’ve got to be willing to be a little bit politically stupid in the clinches. You can’t let yourself be fooled by the tomfoolery that will come at you. And you have to look ‘em in the eye when they threaten you and not blink.

And to the liberals in the state, like it or not the party needs pro-lifers in its ranks. It matters because wecan not ever build a culture of life with half the people.It matters because to a large extent the official Republican Party (as opposed to the rank and file) is flimflamming us with their vows of pro life. It matters because our country cannot survive if it continues with this polarized win-at-all-costs-even-if-it-harms-the-country hyper partisan governance.

If pro-life Democrats want to have a voice in the party, they’ve got to stop compromising their pro-life principles for the party.I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but I believe it’s a fact. However the real reason for not compromising is not to affect the party. It’s that you don’t and shouldn’t compromise about core values. Not killing people (to put it in my simplistic terms) isthecore value. If human beings don’t respect human life, we descend rather quickly to a world where the biggest and meanest get to make all the rules.

The right to life is the basic human right. Nothing anyone can say has the power to change that. If we compromise there, then we’re not on a slippery slope, we’re in a chute, going straight down.